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10 Cards in this Set

Front

Back

Characteristics of Total War (WWI)

- Greeted enthusiastically, national unity, each nation thought they were in the "right." Support of the masses and working class (early)
- Each country experienced a relentless, desperate demand for men and weapons. Each country economic life and organization had to change fast to keep the war machines going. (after only a few months)

Total War

- Each country's govt. began to plan and control economic and social life in order to wage total war
- Govt. planning boards established priorities and decided what was to be produced and consumed
- Rationing, price and wage controls, even workers' freedom were imposed
- Great nations all moved toward planned economies establised by the political leadership

What did Total War Yield

- An effective - therefore, destructive - war effort on all sides
- Did strengthen the cause of socialism
- Germany went the furthest in developing a planned economy to wage total war

Germany's "War Raw Materials Board"

- Walter Rathenau, Jewish industrialist in charge of Germany's electric company, convinced the govt. to set up
- Ration and distribute raw materials
- Every useful material was rationed and inventoried (manure to foreign oil)
- Successful substitutes, synthetic rubber and synthetic nitrates, were used to make explosives
- Recycling campaign (fruit peels, women's hair)
- men and women doing hard labor were given extra rations

Germany's failures

- Failed to tax war profits of private firms heavily enough
- Contributed to mass deficit financing, inflation, the growth of the black market and re-emergence of class conflict

German Leadership in 1917

- Chancellor Hollweg was driven from office in 1917
- Hindenburg and Ludendorff became the real rulers of Germany
- Decreed the ultimate mobilization for total war
- Hindenburg said Germany could win only if all treasures of our soil that agriculture and industry can produce and used exclusively for the war

Auxiliary Service Law

- 1916, brought before the Reichstag
- All males between 17 and 60 had to work only at jobs considered critical for the war effort, was also aimed at women and children
- Many women followed

First Totalitarian Society in Germany

- Established as a result total war
- War production increased while some people starved to death

Great Britain

- Mobilized less rapidly and less completely than Germany
- Imported materail from its empire and U.S.

Ministry of Munitiions

- Formed under David Lloyd George, Great Britain in 1915
- Shortage of Munitions
- Organized a private industry to produce for the war, controlled profits, allocated labor, fixed wage rates, and settled labor disputes
- by 1916 GB was largely planned and regulated and followed successfully in Germany's footsteps

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